It is sometimes desirable to rent apparatus, such as rental of beauty treatment machines to a beauty salon, on a “pay as you go” or “pay per use” basis. In such circumstances it is desirable to know when the apparatus is in use. In particular, it is desirable to be able to accurately determine when a particular apparatus is in use and the number of times the apparatus has been used.
It is known in other applications to include a meter or counter which indicates the number of times an apparatus has been used. However, such counters often require that a person physically inspects the meter to record a reading, which then has to be collated and compared to previous readings to determine the number of uses between readings. Such a method is time consuming and prone to errors as it requires an element of human interaction.
It is also known to pay for services using a swipe card or “top-up” card which can be programmed to store the number of uses. Such systems require expensive infrastructure to implement, with card readers and expensive swipe cards or fobs for each machine. Furthermore, loss of the cards or fobs requires replacements to be purchased, further adding to the costs.
It is difficult however to monitor when the machine is being used and so charge only for when it is used.